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Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919)
An Americanized London Story
It is rather interesting to compare the silent D.W. Griffith BROKEN BLOSSOMS with its inspiration: the 1916 Thomas Burke short story The Chink And The Child, published in Limehouse Nights (Grant Richards Limited, London). Griffith has deliberately left out, added and changed parts of the story in his film. When Burke's collection of Limehouse stories was published it was feared that the book would be barred by the censor. Recently books by Vere Stacpoole (The Blue Lagoon) and D.H. Lawrence (The Rainbow) has been suppressed, as 'frankness in fiction was frowned upon...' (John Gawsworth - Foreword to: The Best Stories of Thomas Burke, Phoenix House, London, 1950). There were enough worrying themes in the story: its sadism, the utterly impossible interracial love affair and the girl's youth. In Burke's story Lucy is found in an opium joint, where a prostitute has taken her to make a profit out of the virgin. Cheng rescues the 'alabaster Cockney child' - she is only twelve - to bring her '...love and death.' Burke's poetic prose is not always graphic: «He took her hand and kissed it; repeated the kiss upon her cheek and lip and little bosom, twining his fingers in her hair. Docilely, and echoing the smile of his lemon lips in a way that thrilled him almost to laughter, she returned his kisses impetuously, gladly. ... And she was his; her sweet self and her prattle, and her birdlike ways were all his own. Oh, beautifully they loved. ...» Nevertheless elsewhere Burke clarifies the nature of their relation as « It may be that he forgot that he was in London and not in Tuan-tsen. It may be that he did not care. Of that nothing can be told. All that is known is that his love was a pure and holy thing.» Griffith's additions vary from Lucy's artificial smile to Cheng's religious mission. The Christian missionary is also Griffith's invention. He has a dig at Western Christian morality sending missionaries around the world while there's still enough to be done in Battling Burrows's own home town. Near the end Cheng kills Battling Burrows with a handgun as in any American western. In Burke's London Limehouse nights a snake deals with Battling Burrows. Was such a venomous revenge not personal enough to Griffith's American taste?
Downhill (1927)
An early downright Hitch.
With their theatre play Down Hill Ivor Novello and Constance Collier produced another lampoon dealing with British boarding school life and the layers of society it depends upon. Ivor Novello attended a school like that himself (Magdalen College, Oxford) and the theme of his play seems authentic in its unlikeliness. A school boy takes the blame for 'getting a girl into trouble' although a friend is to blame. He is expelled not only from school but also from his posh family home. Without his father's backing life quickly goes down hill. After a short career as a Paris gigolo he ends up in the slums of Marseille. Hitchcock filmed Down Hill with his typical mix of 'suspense' and humour throughout the film. The camera zooms into terrified faces, goes down hill on an escalator and an elevator and picks up every shadow and shade on its way. Apparently Hitch had the final scenes tinted in a horribly yellowish green when the protagonist feels ill. Apart from the almost unneeded final act Downhill is a downright Hitch. Its climax is the Paris night club scene where the young and inexperienced taxi dancer and gigolo is awaited by a horny elderly woman who has already compensated his services yet to be rendered.
The Ten Commandments (1923)
DeMille's mega-tsunami against orthodox protestantism
Moses spent forty days on Mount Sinai where he received numerous commandments and laws, described in Exodus XX-XXXI. The Ten Commandments (Ex.XX) particularly apply to Christian religions and denominations.
Inspired by Griffith's 'Intolerance' DeMille uses two historical periods to emphasize the film's moral. DeMille does not modify the original Jewish origin of his source, although he underlines the Christian commandments. The script of the famous prologue was literally taken from Exodus. The church in The Story is not clearly a protestant or Roman catholic house of worship. However, when the orthodox Mrs. McTavish enters the church it collapses. Her famous last words: '...whatever you've done is all my fault. I taught you to fear God in stead of to love him..' also indicate that DeMille hardly sympathizes with orthodox denominations. In the prologue DeMille's epic reaches a magnificent high-point when the Red Sea tsunami protects the fleeing Jewish people before it swallows the Egyptian forces. The Story lacks such a climax. In fact Mrs.McTavish and her Bible becomes tedious in her struggle against the evil that her boys have ended up in. DeMille's 1923 version of The Ten Commandments may be a mega-tsunami against orthodox protestantism, it is still a mass of light for the less orthodox moviegoer that believes in cinema only.
S.V.D. - Soyuz velikogo dela (1927)
A failed Russian Revolution succeeded magnificently on screen.
S.V.D. was released in August 1927. A beautiful costume drama, it is on the other hand a somewhat expressionistic, poetical fantasy. Its photography and images are more important than its desired political contents. The script, written by the inspiring historian Yuri Tinyanov (director Leonid Trauberg [1901-1990]could speak about Tinyanov for hours) supplied a failed love story, a political intrigue involving two czars, and a traveling circus background. The picture glorifies the 1825 'Decembrists' uprisal: officers in the imperial Russian army are fed up with the new czar's autocracy. The main character is a traitor, the Scotsman Maddocks (Medoks). He has won a ring gambling. It carries the initials S.V.D. - the secret union of the 'Big Deed' (overthrowing the czar). Maddocks expects the ring to protect him. He is desparate to enter the circles of political power in St. Petersburg hoping a former lover (Sofia Magaril) will introduce him there. A wounded revolutionary officer is on the run, finding refuge in a circus. This setting enabled cinematographer Andrei Moskvin to film a sequence on a galloping horse 'holding only the camera'. One of the most imaginative scenes takes place on the skating rink. The picture suddenly turns into an ice crystal created by using mirrors. The skater now waltzes his rounds all over the picture. S.V.D. introduces several pessimistic symbols: night clouds, a turtle suggesting how slowly the wounded revolutionary can move, etc. It is an extremely beautiful film, its narrative less important than its image qualities. An un-Russian revolution that failed but turned out a success on screen. It is clear that Kozintsev & Trauberg were ready for their next costume drama THE NEW BABYLON, now considered their great masterpiece. S.V.D. was restored by the German TV-station ZDF ca. 1980. For this version German composer Hamel wrote a new electronic music score, not very fitting apart from the skating rink waltz.
Odna (1931)
Perhaps the most underrated masterpiece of Russian cinema.
Odna (Alone) was not blacklisted but heavily criticized by the Soviet authorities. Much of the picture is not in favour with the politics of the first Five Year Plans. A young teacher (marvellously played by Yelena Kuzmina) is eager to build up a life of her own, happily united with her husband (Pyotr Sobolevsky, incidentally Kuzmina's real life husband). However the Ministry of Education (the official reminiscent of Lenin's widow Krupskaya) sends her off to the Altai Mountains in Russian Mongolia, to provide basic education for the youngest children of the Altai shepherds. Once in the desolate frozen mountain area she begins building a school. The male population particularly is against it. All Kuzmina's attempts to educate the children are obstructed and the local soviet leader is a lazy corrupt burocrate! Kuzmina is abducted and left alone in the snow far from the little village. She is rescued by a little plane and brought back to her beloved Leningrad, promising the children that she will return to do her job. Odna was designed as a silent film. When it was about to be released sound film was introduced in the USSR. Shostakovich wrote a dazzling score for Odna, which also received some lines of dialogue. The picture is based on contrasts: between the safe haven of modern Leningrad, and life in the middle of a frozen nowhere. Between education and the poverty of non-education. Between progress and medieval backwardness. The drama was inspired by a small newspaper article about a young woman in the middle of nowhere being rescued by an air-plane crew.
Novyy Vavilon (1929)
Russia's final climax to the silent cinema
The New Babylon was recognized as a masterpiece as early as 1929. It was rediscovered at the 1958 Bruxelles Expo but properly presented with the original Shostakovich score only in the eighties. The original Shostakovich score (opus 18) had been synchronized with the film under the personal supervision of its director Leonid Trauberg (1901-1990) and - according to Trauberg - he had never 'seen' his film in that final state before 1981. A valuable estimation of the picture can be found in Jay Leyda's KINO. One should realize that there is only one definite version of the picture: the GOSFILOMOFOND print, running for about 90 minutes at variable speed. There is however an apocryphal print about, a clipping together of the original print and approximately another 33% of out-takes. German film historians are responsible for this horrible mutilation of the original. When this version was shown in Hamburg in 1983 a press bulletin explained that scenes had been added that were once removed by censorship. However, what had been added were only discarded scenes that had been cut because they were too dull; for instance actrice Kuzmina in front of a cupboard of hat boxes or actor Sobolevsky with his wounded arm in a sling as an unlikely cabaret artist in 1871 'Gay Paris'. Director Leonid Trauberg saw this `German' version with the extra footage "that I cut out myself" and has furiously tried to prohibit its screening. A lengthy statement about the original and apocryphal print of The New Babylon was sent to various cinema museums by Trauberg in October 1983. His statement is to be found in `Eisenstein was Great Eater' - In Memory of Leonid Trauberg / Graduate Press, Buren, Netherlands, pp. 107-109 (ISBN 90-72058-07-0). The New Babylon is one of the greatest masterpieces of the Russian cinema. However the German version with its complimentary footage is a disgrace for the profession of film restoration. In fact the best guideline to follow is the original score composed for the picture by Shostakovich in 1929. Its greatest advocate is maestro Mark Fitz-Gerald from Croydon, associated with the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra. If you have any doubts about music or print contact Theodore van Houten, POB 1, Haamstede, 4328 ZG-Netherlands.